Modern speech and gesture systems often demand a user's attention, drawing their eyes away from critical tasks and, sometimes, affecting their behavior as they engage in activities as simple as watching TV or as complex as operating a vehicle. This demand placed on the user's attention taxes the cognitive load that is associated with various actions required of a user, thereby making it difficult to multitask safely while operating such systems during operation of a vehicle, for instance. Furthermore, current systems often require specific and un-intuitive gestures or voice commands to be performed by a user to enable a desired function. Such un-intuitive gesture and voice commands further tax the cognitive load placed on a user as they must turn their focus to remembering and performing the required gesture or voice command to enable the desired feature. This increase cognitive load can reduce a user's ability to focus on the current activity at hand.
Cognitive load placed on a user can represent the combined impact of several factors. One such factor can be an intrinsic component of the cognitive load (I), which can depend partially or completely on the complexity and difficulty level associated with a task, and the associated memory that needs to be allocated to it. Another factor can be the germane load (G) that is associated with learning a new skill. Finally, an extraneous factor (E), such as how information is presented to a user, can affect cognitive loading, particularly where a complex series of mental schemata is required to represent the information in the brain. The total cognitive load (T) is then the sum of these factors, I, G, and E. These factors illustrate why cognitive loading is so high in existing systems. Both the germane and conscious efforts involved in performing the learning process of a modern speech control system can be hampered by presenting the user with a discouraging experience. More importantly, modern user interface systems can require navigation through multiple layers, such that the extraneous load placed on the users becomes very challenging. Therefore, adding an additional primary activity that is required to access the layered data can force the cognitive schemata that is associated with all the different user interface layers to become significantly challenging to users.
Additionally, modern voice and gesture systems are generally cumbersome to use and slow to react. Furthermore, modern speech and gesture systems are often too primitive or clumsy to actually discern the true intention of the user. This inability of current voice and gesture systems to efficiently and easily recognize the intention of the user can result in not only an increase in the cognitive load of the user, but also in frustration and distraction, potentially increasing the danger associated with performing certain acts while simultaneously operating a vehicle. This increase in applied cognitive load is a major problem that has resulted in slow and difficult adoption and integration of voice and gesture systems into the daily lives of consumers and users.
Finally, complex modern devices, such as automobiles, present a user with a multitude of distractions. The more that technology advances, with more options being presented to users, the more the cognitive load of a user, such as a driver of an automobile, is increased. This increase in cognitive load, combined with the additional distractions associated with operating multiple functions while driving, can result in the user being substantially distracted when performing operations other than those purely related to operating the vehicle.
The above issues demonstrate the need for a speech and gesture system and method that can be implemented without increasing the cognitive load placed on a user when performing an operation, such as a operating a vehicle.